My life living in the largest favela in Rio de Janeiro. I want to help educate people about the realities of life here. There is much misinformation about favelas and we who live here.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

How favela tourism can benefit the community!

How Tourism in the Favela can make a difference.

I just had a person email me and ask me about how this kind
of tourism can benefit the favela. I can only talk about what WE do. What
others do is not of our concern.

We started this tourism company back in 2008 with the idea
of using socially responsible tourism to raise money to support different
projects here in the community. This is how we operate. If it can’t help the
favela, then what kind of social work is this?

The idea is to try to help as many people in the community
benefit from the projects we support. We have several projects we support. We
have our own NGO Spin Rocinha, Dj project and other projects that we are involved in.

There is an ethical side to tourism here that needs to be considered and I went through lots of taking with residents about my idea. The first is that at all times, residents and the community be treated with the utmost respect. This includes if approached by locals, to greet them and engage in conversation. Just as you want to "know" the favela, they might have interest in you and where you are from. Second, is about who and what you can photograph. Most people do not want to be in photographs, so don't take their picture.

3 important factors when considering a tour like this:

1.) The visits/tours be done by local people. ALL of our guides are people who live here or were born here. We only employ people who live inside the community and all of our guides participate in some kind of social project outside of what we do.

2.) The tour must be on foot walking through the community for more than 3 hours. On foot you see everything and are part of our community. Rocinha is the largest favela community in Brazil. There is no way that you will receive a quality experience in under 3 hours. When you walk in the community, residents appreciate this. It shows you are not afraid of us and want to get to "know" the community better.

3.) Companies that support local projects and initiatives that benefit the favela. This is our most important aspect of why we do this work. Since I started in this work, I still live in the same small rented one bedroom apartment. I do not live a extravagant lifestyle nor do I want to. I enjoy helping with present and future projects. Other than our Dj School Spin Rocinha, currently we also support Favela Phoenix by donating school supplies to their English school.
We also support a Local Daycare called Refugio e Fortaleza run by Luciana who cares for 32 children between the ages of 1 year up to 6 years old. The object of the work we do is to try to help projects that receive no help. At this time we are working on connecting with more projects here to attract interest from outside people. The idea is to create a better understanding about favela culture and break down the barriers of stigma for those living in these communities.

We also started supporting (PLAR) "Projeto Lar Ao Animais da Rocinha", and outreach organization that spays and neuters stray dogs and cats in the favela. We just donated 2 carrying cases for animals to be transported to the vet. We always talk with the organization about other ways we can help.

Cristiano with the two carriers we bought for Lar ao Animais da Rocinha.

Here is a breakdown of our organization:

I am going to explain the 6 parts of FAVELA ADVENTURES. We are not just a tourism company. The idea is to use
tourism here as a way to benefit the people here. The more people we can
involve with out work, the better for everybody. Its obvious that we can not
help everybody but if everyone does a little to help out, then great for
everyone.

1.) Tours of our community- This is the base of
how everything else operates. Without the tours, the other 5 parts would not
exist. The tours of Rocinha are the only income from our work. Our visits are
walking through the community explaining how life operates here. How are we
different many ask. All our guides reside in Rocinha and part of our projects
or other projects inside the favela. Our tours are longer than most starting
with 4 hour visits. We feel that the only way you can really understand a place
is to be here for a while. Our tours are supported by the community because of
the other volunteer work we do here.

2.) Dj SchoolSpin Rocinha- Started in August of 2011 is our social project. We teach residents from 16-58 years old who reside in Rocinha. Currently we have about 16 sudents and operate the classes 6 days a week, from 7-10pm Monday-Saturday. We have a professional studio with the top of the line DJ equipment. For those wanting a career in DJ'ing we can refer them for jobs when they are ready. Spin Rocinha is a comprehensive program and students are provided instruction in the art of Dj'ing for free! We welcome Dj's from all over the world to come and visit our school to see or to give a workshop. Check out some of our previous posts of visitors we have had here to our school. We are developing the next generation of Dj's!

3.) Volunteers- We also receive many inquiries
from foreigners wanting to help the favela by offering to volunteer. We are not
a business for this. We can refer you to several different projects who have
told us that they are open to volunteers. Basic spoken portuguese certainly
helps the experience for the visitor. If you are interested in helping out here
please send us some information about yourself, why you want to volunteer and
what projects you have interest in. we are connected to about 15 different
projects, anything from Sports, Art or Music related activities. It helps if
you have a Facebook page because we can then refer you to the page of the project
that you are interested in. You can look over their page and see if the project
interests you. We do not believe volunteers should need to pay for volunteering
so please do your research on this. We give you the referral to the project and
you do the rest. The projects that we work with DO NOT expect foreigners to pay
money to volunteer. What I do recommend though is if you are going to volunteer
at an art school, that you bring some art materials as a "donation"
to the project. This way the materials directly are beneficial to the project.
We do not recommend giving money to any projects as this sets up the project
expecting or only depending on outside help.

4.) Donations- This is a fairly new project
that we have started. About 2 years ago I was receiving emails from visitors
asking how they could help out with donations. When I first started doing the
tours in 2008, I would give art supplies to Tio Lino's Art School here in
Rocinha. Once I started the Dj School, my focus changed on directing our money to
be spent on Dj equipment which is very expensive. As this was happening for us,
I noticed that Tio Lino was getting help with sponsorship and even had a
building built for his art school. So our money focused on building our Dj
School. But still people would ask about donating things. So, I had this idea
of finding projects inside the favela that really needed help and who were not
receiving anything from anybody. Without letting too many know of my idea, I
would find projects that needed help and then began to focus donations to be for
specific projects. For example we help a Art Project called Espaco
das Artes by giving them specifically art supplies
and any materials they request that they need for their art projects. Many of
the donations come from the help individuals who find out about Pack
for a Purpose, a non profit that encourages travellers to
bring donations to projects in developing countries. We have had huge success
and with that we can help so many more projects in need.

5.) Housing- Many times after tours are given,
people ask us about volunteering but they want to stay inside the community. We
can help them find a place to stay. We have access to residents who have
separate apartments to rent or home stays with a family. The idea is to have
people from outside of Brazil get to know and understand favela life. If you want to stay in a guesthouse, we have a place where visitors/volunteers can stay. Its a 4 story house with plenty of room for 8 guests. Check out our housing option here. There are other options as well. Contact us for more information.

6.) We can facilitate individual projects here. In the past we have helped people from outside of Brazil who are involved
in many different projects. They contacted me wanting to make interesting
projects with the locals. In the future we plan to help facilitate some
Basketball Clinics that will be run by Nate, a former visitor who runs a
project in Philadelphia called "Books before Ball". These clinics are
important to the development of youth, where the focus is on combining
Education with Basketball.Daniel Hoffman from the USA, brought
disposable cameras to the favela and distributed them to children and adults to
document their lives. When he receives the cameras back from the residents, he
is going to make a blog and put the fotos and profiles of the people who took
part in this project. See the post here about this:http://lifeinrocinha.blogspot.com.br/2014/01/daniel-hoffman-and-photography-project.html

These are just some of the projects we have
facilitated here in our favela and we are always open to making more great
things happen here. If you have an idea of a project you would like to do,
contact me and we can make it happen!

These are the 6 parts to what we do here. This
is why our website url is ".org".
We want tourism to benefit and help as many people in our community! Thank
you to all of the tourists that have visited with us over the last 7 years. We
are slowly building to our objective to by a building here to house art and
music projects. To contact us about anything regarding Rocinha, you can contact Zezinho at: visitrocinha@gmail.com

But for now, the work we are doing is very
rewarding! Always thankful!